Thursday, January 31, 2013

There are a couple of things I remember about Superbowl weeks from my football-obsessed youth.

And both involved players running off at the mouth in interesting ways.

The first was Joe Namath spouting off after a few pops about how he was going to clean grandpa Earl Morrall's clock in Superbowl III. Back then I was still young enough to be awestruck, especially when Joe Willie, against all odds, actually delivered.

This year a cornerback named Chris Culliver, who plays for the San Francisco 49'ers, said some absolutely vile things about teammates and lifestyles in response to a dastardly and duplicitous line of questioning from a shock-jockular interviewer earlier in the week. As a result, the player and his team have since apologized profusely, as they should have.

But the league's response looks to be way over the top and demonstrates just how crazy the world has gotten when it comes to hiding away all the loose cannons, including the potentially interesting ones, at all costs:

...Several NFL teams recently have become concerned about the NFL's credentialing process for the Super Bowl media interview sessions mandatory for all players and coaches on the competing teams.

There is a sense the league should create a more responsible process that scrutinizes media applications and to avoid exposing players to media representatives who might never be approved for credentials to NFL games...

Then again, it would appear that football players and premiers, both, will now be fully protected from the super-scarier shockier-jockier types that want to trap them and trick them with their dastardly and duplicitous questions.

Don't know about you but I sure feel a whole lot better about the future of professional football, not to mention democracy as we know it.

Which, politics of destruction aside, might actually be a good thing for everybody in British Columbia.

Except that...

If you just read the Canadian Press report in The Globe on today's tentative agreement with Healthcare workers you would likely conclude that it is the BC Liberal Government, and the government alone, that is the big winner.

Which might have a few of the Wizards of Snooklandia just a wee bit worried, given that there have been concerns in the past about the veracity of the BC Liberal Government's budget projections pre- vs post-....

Election.

Luckily, though, we still have a demonstrably independent Auditor General around (at least for the time being) who can have a look at things and tell us what's what before we vote, right?

Wrong.....

Here's the press release straight from the Belly of the PAB-Bot-Beasts itself that strongly suggests they are going to do their best that this does not, in point of fact, happen:

VICTORIA - The B.C. government has appointed nationally respected economist Dr. Tim O'Neill to review and assess the economic and revenue projections contained in the upcoming provincial budget, Finance Minister Michael de Jong announced today.

A former chief economist and executive vice-president for the Bank of Montreal, O'Neill will review the work undertaken by finance ministry staff as Budget 2013 is finalized, with a specific focus on the underlying methodologies, processes and material assumptions the government has used in preparing its economic and revenue forecasts.

O'Neill will have the opportunity to review and evaluate all material supporting the Province's economic and revenue forecasts for the 2012-13 through 2015-16 fiscal years, and he will have complete access to Finance ministry staff as needed.

O'Neill will provide the Minister of Finance with a written assessment of the minister's economic and revenue forecasts. He will also be available on budget day to speak about this review...

{snippety doo-dah}

...Finance Minister Michael de Jong -

"Given the ongoing economic uncertainty both in Canada and around the world over the past few years, I believe an external review of our economic and revenue forecasts makes sense at this time. It will also provide British Columbians with added assurance that Budget 2013 is based on sound revenue and economic forecasts."...

Look, no offense to Mr. O'Neill who seems to do this kind of thing for a living, but a group being reviewed does NOT bring in the reviewer itself and call that independent, which is how they are trumpeting this in the public prints.

In addition, this codswallop about how the reviewer will be there to explain the budget projections on budget day itself, at a time when it is Mr. de Jong's duty to explain said projections himself as a representative of the government, is egregious in the extreme.

Therefore, given that, it is my opinion that this is little more than PR cover-publicity/deflector spin stunt.

Which, once again demonstrates that Ms. Clark, her Wizards, and her Ministerial Minions have absolutely no intention of actually governing.

Instead, it really and truly appears that their only intent is to obfuscate just long enough to win an election.

I mean, seriously, can you imagine this bunch unleashed, once again, for four more years?

How much would we owe to IPP's by then...$100 billion? $500 billion? A cool trillion?

Instead, it has come to a billion or so people's attention in the last 'news' cycle because Sports Illustrated is claiming that one of the football players involved in this weekend's Super Bowl used the stuff while recovering from an injury last fall.

Which is neither here nor there.

Because it is not the spray itself that matters, or where it comes from, but instead what the snake oil salesmen who are pushing the stuff are claiming is in it that is the real thing to focus on here.

Interestingly, however, just about every sports talk jock I've heard babble on about this matter has lumped the spray and the claimed magic 'ingredient' together and then laughed off both.

Now....

I'm extremely skeptical that this spray can deliver this magic 'ingredient' in any sort of bioavailable/useful form.

But I can see why athletes that want to enhance their healing, their performance and/or their longevity could be bamboozled into trying to get the stuff into their bodies.

Because this magic ingredient, referred to haltingly by the talk jocks as Eye....Gee...Eff...One, is actually something called 'Insulin-like Growth Factor - 1' (IGF-1).

Which matters because:

1) IGF-1 is a powerful non-steroidal mass-building 'anabolic' compound.2) Normally, IGF-1 is something that your liver makes gobs of when your pituitary gland pumps out human growth hormone (hGH)....In other words, IGF-1 is one of the compounds that actually does the job of hGH (think of hGF as being like your foot and the IGF-1 as the gas peddle that revs your body's mass-building engine.3) Claims have been made that IGF-1 also has anti-aging properties.

Got it now?

Clearly, the quick-to-derision, know-it-all talk-jocks don't.

______The thing about IGF-1 that makes it highly unlikely that the claims about the Antler Spray are credible is the fact that the factor (ha!) is extremely labile and that it actually sticks to a bunch of binding proteins when it moves, primarily after it is produced in the liver, through the blood to get to places like muscle tissue where it does it's thing by binding to a bunch of goal post-like molecular thingies on the surface of the cells (i.e. the 'receptors')...Thus, a topical spray as an efficacious delivery vehicle looks to be iffy at best...But I would assert that any athlete that is spraying themselves with the stuff (over and over and over and over again, apparently, in the case of at least one professional golfer) is not doing it because they want to be friends with the Grinch and/or are on a quest to end up as one-off in a Matt Good song.Regarding the laughing derision of something as weird as 'antler spray' from the talking jocks....I wonder if they know where most of the 'natural' anabolic steroid/testosterone used to come from (and where the name of the steroid itself came from as well)?Finally, the fountain-of-youth claims are actually based on really, really cool science in...get this!...round worms!

Vaughn Palmer wrote a column late last week in which he concluded that the fact that some folks are now willing to take specific members of the BC Liberal government to task is a sign that said government's time in the sun is, perhaps, coming to an end.

And as one example Mr. Palmer cited Surrey mayor Diane Watts' and Liberal MLA Gordon Hogg's piping up about how inappropriate it was that the BC Liberal Minister of Everything, Rich Coleman, had called up Surrey municipal councillors to make it very clear to them that it was his way or the highway on that casino deal.

But here's the thing....

While internal BC Liberalish squabbles are one thing, I would sure like to know why it is still only Alex Browne of the Peace Arch News who is really going after the story in Surrey.

In fact, Mr. Browne had another king hell follow-up in which he reported on the more recent salvos Mayor Watts fired back at Mr. Coleman after the MofE sprayed the landscape with misdirection gas about how the recent meetings about the Surrey casino weren't real public hearings and therefore his influence peddling wasn't actually the peddling of influence.

Interestingly, it is entirely possible that Surrey is not the only front in the big money gaming war that the VSun et al. are not covering.

What the heckfire am I babbling on about this time?

Well it turns out that there is another Lotuslandian group that has complained about Mr. Coleman's interference in the not so distant past.

More specifically, the 'Alliance for Arts and Culture' raised concerns that it was being targeted with similar 'my way or the highway' stuff when it raised questions about the massive Casino Industrial Complex that was to have been built by a Las Vegas concern called Paragon that had, as one of it's principals, a very fine fellow, and former BC Liberal government-appointed BC Lottery Corporation chairperson, named Mr. T. Richard Turner.

Here is just some of what the Alliance had to say at the time:...In February, 2011, a message was conveyed to individuals close to the BCACG that unnamed persons in the provincial government were unhappy with the challenge by the BCACG and the Alliance to the Paragon Gaming casino application in Vancouver. It was stated that continuing this strategy could result in charities being hurt.

On Thursday, March 3, the BC Persons With AIDS Society received an unexpected cut of $50,000 from its gaming grant, which had remained stable for 6 years. BCPWAS has been a supporter of the challenge to Paragon Gaming's application to expand its license. The implication is clear.

As Minister Coleman's strong personal attack on Inspector Barry Baxter, head of the RCMP Proceeds of Crime Unit, demonstrates, there is a price to be paid for speaking up.

"For too long, charities and non-profits have been intimidated into silence," says Susan Marsden, Executive Director of the BCACG. "Our member organizations support families and communities, and the crisis in gaming grants has become a crisis for too many British Columbians across the province. It is deeply unhealthy that organizations not only feel the financial pressure, but are silenced by fear of the minister responsible."...

So.

Given the fact that Mr. Coleman has now demonstrated that he will pick up the phone to 'give his input' to folks involved in casino decisions, why are the high ranking members of the Lotuslandian landed proMedia gentry not going after this story with all they've got?

I mean, they, themselves, don't have to wait for waning influences and/or internal squabbles within political parties to emerge before they go after a story of huge import, do they?

After all, it's not like there's anybody around who would take them out behind a barn and start yelling, screaming and, perhaps, spitting if they did....

Is there?

_____For anybody interested, I graded the performance of various pro and non-pro members of the local media on their performances in the first skirmish of the second front battle (which is sure to flare up again soon)....here.And thanks to Merv Adey for suggesting I have another look at the Arts Alliance thing...
.

For those looking for it, my initial comments on the judge's decision not to give the Auditor General details of the 6 million dollar Railgate payoff are in the post immediately below this one...

____

When our oldest kid E. was born we lived in the Bay Area.

Her first ballgame was at old Candlestick when she was three months old, lower left field corner...Bay Bridge series the weekend before opening day 1993...Rickey Henderson and, by some twist of fate, Barry Bonds both played a few innings in left that windy afternoon...I think it was Sunday.

A few weeks later I took her to Oakland Alameda County Coliseum on the BART train to see the A's play...On my own...She stayed in the backpack pretty much the whole time...mostly sleeping while I just walked around and around the concourses of that gigantic donut...The upper decks were mostly empty...I chatted for a while with an old guy usher named Bill high up on the third level in right field...even wrote a story about that...I think it's on a 3.5'' floppy somewhere...Should probably try and find it.

The image at the top of the post is of E. just before she started getting really big...Summer holidays 2004...We were staying with friends up the coast who live right on the Sonoma/Mendocino County line...We drove down to Oakland just to watch the game that day... A's and Angels...Vladimir Guerrero had just abandoned the Montreal Expos for his MVP season with Anaheim...Our seats were right behind home plate but we wandered out to the upper deck in right just before the 7th inning stretch and I took this picture...

****

Our oldest kid (who is no longer a kid) lives most of the year in Montreal now.

There was a big flood there yesterday on campus.

She was fine, but she had to skip busking after classes were done for the day.

Which means there will be one rainout in her otherwise MVP season I guess.

OK?

______Oh, and just so E. knows....There have been a few other events of import occur on January 29th...Events like, say....this one.
.

The judge has ruled that AG John Doyle will not get the unredacted details of the six million dollar deal that killed the Railgate trial deader than a doornail pretty much instantaneously in the fall of 2010.

I've had a look at the decision.

And, while I'm no lawyer, it looks to me like it comes down to a matter of 'privilege', at least according to judge Bauman.

[11]While apparently wishing to co-operate in the Indemnities Performance Audit, the government has been properly cautious in ensuring that any privilege enjoyed by third parties is appropriately respected.

[12]In respect of the Basi and Virk documents which the Auditor General has pursued, including, but not limited to, unredacted legal invoices from their defence lawyers, and access to the independent reviewers (the respondents Ms. Harper and Mr. Jones), who reviewed those accounts, this led to proceedings in this Court. The matter came before Greyell J. He concluded (2011 BCSC 1064) that Mr. Basi and Mr. Virk had waived privilege over the materials then in the hands of the government. In the result, he ordered the government and its counsel (Mr. Richard Butler) to produce to the Auditor General all information, records, etc. in the government’s custody or possession relating to the indemnification of Mr. Basi and Mr. Virk’s legal fees in their prosecution. This included the redacted accounts and disbursement receipts provided with the reviewers certificates.

[13]I note parenthetically that Mr. Butler initially indicated that the certificates from the reviewers did not attach the actual legal accounts, redacted or otherwise. In this he was in error. He corrected the error in an affidavit filed later in these proceedings. Much was made of this about-face in the media but, as predicted by some, while regrettable, it makes little difference to my disposition of these applications.

[14]In addition, four potential witnesses in the Basi/Virk prosecution who had also been indemnified by the government waived privilege in respect of information and documents in the possession of government concerning their respective Special Indemnities. Two of these potential witnesses also gave the Auditor General access to all materials in the possession of their reviewers (which would include unredacted accounts and receipts).

[15]Messrs. Basi and Virk, however, have continued to assert their privilege in respect of documents in the possession of their reviewers. That, and the fact that the Indemnities Performance Audit includes desired access to the files of counsel for all recipients of Special Indemnities, has led to these proceedings....

{snippety doo-dah}

....[18]On application of the government, I appointed an Amicus Curiae in these proceedings, Mr. Michael Frey. Efforts were then made to contact the other recipients of Special Indemnities who were not yet represented in these proceedings, but whose interests were obviously affected by the broad relief sought by the Auditor General. Thirty-three third party indemnified persons have now waived their solicitor-client privilege over information held by government in respect of their Special Indemnities.

[19]Clearly, the Auditor General now has considerable material affecting sundry recipients of Special Indemnities; but he pursues the broad relief that I have described.

[20]The government has made limited submissions before me, as has the reviewer Ms. Harper. In pre-trial proceedings, I granted intervenor status to John van Dongen, a member of the Legislative Assembly who has a strong interest in these matters. Through Mr. Roger McConchie, he has made thoughtful submissions essentially supporting the position advanced by the Auditor General.

[21]The Amicus, in turn, has addressed the issue surrounding third party solicitor-client privileged information and records in relation to Special Indemnities given by government for the payment of legal expenses for those whose privilege has not been waived to permit access by the Auditor General. The Amicus did not address the issues of Cabinet or public interest privilege or confidence. In respect of these issues, the Auditor General pursues the requested relief notwithstanding the fact that government has provided all relevant documents potentially subject to this privilege in these matters.

[22]I now turn to the central issues. I will proceed first to briefly summarize the positions of the parties; I will then discuss the legislative scheme; next I will deal at some length with the alleged need for the broad relief sought by the Auditor General. Here I will canvass the expert evidence offered on prevailing Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants (“CICA”) auditing standards. Finally, I will analyze the relief sought in the context of the cases.

[23]Before I do so, however, I state my conclusion: here, as in so many other cases of conflict between other values and the principle of solicitor-client privilege, the privilege must be protected; it must prevail against abrogation by inference. Solicitor-client privilege, as the case law repeatedly reminds us, is fundamental to the proper functioning of our legal system. It is virtually an absolute privilege and must remain so. Properly understood, the privilege does not act as a shield, obscuring from view matters that should be publically aired. But that is the reaction of many in this contest between those who assert the privilege and the Auditor General in his quest for “transparency” and “accountability”....

I will leave it to others with much more legal experience to way in on the merits of judge Bauman's decision.

_____Of course, this decision means that there will be much rejoicing in Snooklandia tonight aided and abetted no doubt by that most 'interesting' Mustel poll that just came out accidentally (on purpose?) today and is currently being steno'ed, straight up, by the VSun....

Earlier today we noted that Janet Steffenhagen of the VSun had done the right thing and called the Education Minister out on his obfuscation when he told Bill Good this morning that he didn't know that the teachers and the school boards were planning to announce their (real) 'framework agreement' for moving forward with labour negotiations just a few days after he suddenly announced his government's (bogus) 10 year plan for labour peace that was based on, essentially, nothing at all.

Which means the bogus plan was very likely little more than deflector spin.

So....

Now caught in the headlights of his (and/or the Snook's Wizards') own making, the Minister has changed his tune and contradicted himself completely with a big bowl full of word salad filled to bursting with blather of the most nonsensical kind:“I was aware that the BCPSEA board and BCTF were looking at a short-term agreement on how the two sides could better manage this next round of bargaining.

“To clarify, what I was referring to when speaking to Bill Good this morning was that I was not aware until a week or two ago that this matter was to be the focus of discussions at the BCPSEA AGM this past weekend.

“There was an expectation that this short-term bargaining initiative was going to be dealt with at the BCPSEA board meeting in the second week of January, but the board members deferred the discussion until this past weekend.

“It’s important to point out that the measures agreed to by the two parties are very close, if not identical, to what is proposed in the government’s framework. The key difference is that the BCPSEA-BCTF agreement lasts for the next four months only, whereas government is looking to make a broader set of improvements for the long term.”

Short-term my rear end (and yes we see what you did with that little second vs. third week of January thingy which shows just how much you did really know, so...deflect...deflect...deflect...and when that doesn't work deflect some more).

Look.

The Minister should resign immediately for doing his best to derail a process of substance, short-term or otherwise, that has the potential to actually make things better for kids in this province.

OK?

_____And that last paragraph....Does that mean that the Wizards got wind of the agreement and then tried to hijack it for their own PR purposes (don't forget - there was NO consultation with either party before the grandstanding)...This is pathetic and entirely counterproductive...For example, based on the truth-challenged Minister's latest 'statement', what if the government had just waited until after the announcement of the framework agreement, praised it (given that the Minister is now saying that it is, indeed, praiseworthy), and then made the suggestion that it could be used as the basis for good faith negotiations to make a long-term approach feasible?....Would that not have been an attempt to actually govern rather than grandstand by spiking the real, honest good work of others with a premature announcement of a bogus, empty process?...Now...Spin for spin's sake is one thing...But spin that is designed to try and destroy something good that is in the public interest is something else entirely, which is why I honestly believe that heads should roll here.Rant over, sorry....But in my opinion this is just one more example of both the incompetence and the willful destructiveness of these people.

The VSun's Jennifer Steffenhagen is absolutely flummoxed that Christy Clark's (so-called) Education Minister Don 'Spikey' McRae claimed this morning that he knew nothing of the coming 'framework agreement' between teachers and school boards as he was laying out the stupid on the table last week:

...The suggestion that he was unaware of the BCTF-BCPSEA proposal (or the date for ratification, if that’s what he was referring to) until Jan. 19 is incredible. Although my story about this deal was the first media report, it had been in the works since November, and theBCPSEA board of directorsincludes four senior ministry officials, one of whom is assistant deputy ministerClaire Avison....

Which prompted a killer tweet from Paul Willcocks that forms the basis of the header to this piece:

Remember, Ms. Clark herself was pumping the stupid as something that would protect the education of young children from Grade 2-12 when she herself would have to be the same if she did not know (in her heart of hearts) that it was nothing but deflector spin pure and simple as she was doing the pumping.

And this is governance?

Sheesh.

_____Oh...And the fact that Ms. Steffenhagen works the Education beat as a longterm gig for the VSun says volumes here in that she really knows this stuff - and it shows (including the naming of the apparatchik)...Hey...Look!...The Globe's Wendy Stuek has now tweeted up the fact that 'Dec 7th bulletin' from the school board ass'n that we referred to yesterday said that the coming 'framework' would be discussed with the Ministry....

When he was first elected leader of the BC NDP it was my opinion that Mr. Dix was going to have to deal, head on, with the 'memo' issue from days gone by.

Because it is something that non-partisans just may find themselves wondering about as election day approaches.

But.

Stepping back a bit...

One thing I find interesting about this dredging up of old press-pieces is that, upon reading them again, the double-standard of how the foibles of Mr. Clark and his wizards were treated by the Lotuslandian proMedia 'then' compared to how Ms. Clark and her wizards are being treated by said media 'now' becomes apparent all over again.

Case in point, the following, which was published in the Province on March 25, 1999 (they don't give the byline, but I can guess). To catch a glimpse of the double-standard, just keep the word 'speculation' (based on unproven allegations and conjecture at the specific time in question) in mind as you read:...Ever since the RCMP raided Glen Clark’s house in the great casino caper, the premier has done nothing but duck, dodge and evade the tough questions.

And for good reason: Clark knows he has no reasonable explanation to offer for how one of his best friends — deck-building handyman Dimitrios Pilarinos — got a casino licence worth millions of dollars.

In fact, through all the turmoil of the past three weeks, Clark has offered up just one measly alibi: The notorious “memo to file” supposedly written last summer by his principal secretary, Adrian Dix.

Dix, who was fired from his job yesterday, and Pilarinos have something in common: They are intimate friends of the premier. Dix and Clark even own a Victoria condo together.

But does Dix’s friendship and loyalty run so deep that he’d write a phoney memo in a desperate coverup of the premier’s relationship with Pilarinos?

Sadly, that’s what the police suspect. Now Dix is the subject of their investigations and the authenticity of Clark’s alibi is formally being questioned.

The memo is dated July 17, 1998. In it, Dix says Clark asked to be insulated from the decision-making process on Pilarinos’s casino application.

“Whatever the decision, he [Clark] wanted no part in the outcome,” Dix wrote.

How convenient. And how suspicious. Here’s what we’re supposed to believe:

Dix says the memo was written for his eyes only. It was a “memo to file” uncirculated anywhere else in government until March 3, the day after the cops searched Clark’s house.

“I just saw it the day it was produced to the public,” Clark confirmed yesterday.

The memo is stamped “Office of the Premier,” but Dix says he can’t remember who stamped it (or even if he stamped it himself).Sound fishy to you? It sure does to the cops. That’s why the RCMP commercial-crime squad paid a little visit to the premier’s legislature office — where Dix works — on March 16.

Dix confirmed yesterday that the police examined his computer. He also said he expects to be interviewed by the police about the memo (undoubtedly with a taxpayer-financed lawyer at his side).

These latest revelations raise new questions about Clark’s fitness for office...

Of course, there is something else that is important to consider here.

Which is that if Mr. Shepard et al. have decided they want to make a big deal about something that Mr. Dix was involved with, as unelected official, in 1999, does this mean that it would not be unreasonable for others to ask specific, pointed questions about things Ms. Clark was involved in, as an elected official and cabinet member in, say, 2003?

_____And if you do go a-googling looking for the byline on the 14 year old Province piece posted above, you won't find it on the first pass...But you will find that the same piece has already been posted, in full, on...You guessed it....the 'Risky Dix' smearsite...Gosh....Wasn't that site constructed by the BC Liberal Party and/or current BC Liberal Party MLA's caucus staff?

Sunday, January 27, 2013

In response to a post from yesterday in which we raised the possibility that the (not)Premier's silly 10 year 'Peace In Your Kid's Grade 2 to Grade 12 Time!' plan was nothing more than an attempt to spike-spin the BCTF/BCSPEA (teachers & schoolboards) 'framework agreement' announcement, a reader raised the possibility that this may have actually gone the other way around.

This interesting suggestion is based on something that popped up on Janet Steffenhagen's VSun proBlog last week which goes like this:

...The tentative (framework) deal was reached Dec. 6 but was kept under wraps until my story. If it’s approved, negotiations would open Feb. 4 with proposals exchanged by March 1....

Which, if you think about it, means that the announcement of the 'agreement' this weekend could have all been a set-up perpetrated by those dastardly teachers and the duplicitous school boards designed to whack the (not)Premier and the Wizards for their '10 year plan' sillyness.

Except for three things...

First....It would appear that the plan, for awhile at least, was to announce the framework thingy this weekend at BCSPEA's big pow-wow.

Second...News of the framework thingy was 'leaked' to Ms. Steffenhagen.

Third...There was, apparently, at least a whiff of the agreement up on the school board association's website on Dec 20th (I say 'apparently' because the link provided by Ms. Steffenhagen looks to be broken).

So, given those three things, I don't think it is not unreasonable in the least to conclude that the Wizards of Snooklandia (and their sniffers/moles amongst the boards - there are four gov. reps on the board of the BCSPEA) knew this was coming at least a month ago.

Thus....

It is still my opinion that the dopey 10 year plan thing was rushed to the proMedia table by the Wizards the week before the BCSPEA's big pow-wow in an attempt to spike the framework agreement story.

But I am happy to stand corrected by those with real inside information on the situation.

______Please note....As NVG points out in the comments....Grade two through Grade twelve is actually...Eleven years...What's that you ask....They don't teach simple math to the academic tourists that pass through the Sorbonne?

This time it's the teachers and the schoolboards, making a mockery of the ridiculous thousand year REI Co-Op.....errrrr...10 Year Educational Anschluss, by getting together, consulting, finding a middle ground, and making an actual deal rather than just photo-opshopping for the cameras.

The BC Teachers' Federation and its direct employer have approved a new bargaining framework for the next round of contract negotiations.

Union President Susan Lambert says the new deal with the B.C. Public School Employers' Association allows for earlier bargaining and a facilitator to help negotiations.

Lambert said she thinks teachers are glad for some upbeat news, “after so many years of frustration and disappointment.”

“This particular understanding has really, really heartened teachers that maybe there is some compromise that can be made,” Lambert told CBC News Saturday.

The BCTF voted in favour on Staurday morning while the BCSPEA board gave it the thumbs up later in the day...

Meanwhile, in the comment threads to a previous post, Grant G, an Anon-O-Mouse and I have been discussing what the sudden unveiling of the ridiculous Anschluss late last week by the Wizards of Snooklandia was really (sorry Ian) all about Alfie...

Do you reckon the Wizards of Snookland saw the denoument coming and tried to spike it with this ridiculous running of the 10 year stupidity up the flagpole as a deflector beacon...I mean imagine where this story would be going today without said beacon?

BC Liberals wanted to wait until the legislature opened or even delayed their scheme until the writ was dropped.

Intel tells me that the Government got wind , got wind that the two sides were going to come to terms..They had to move fast, failed anyway..

Sheesh, that`s funny.."Government got wind"!

Now that`s an understatement!

1:53 PM, January 26, 2013

Anonymous said...

Did you see on the liberal TV {global} weekend news they were talking about the how the BCTF and the employer hammered out a negotiating framework.

While showing all sorts of pictures of crustys PR conference when she was spouting off about her 10 year agreement, if you didnt know, you would think that she had something to do with it the way it was presented on GLOBAL?

It is true...The stupid deflector beacon atop the flagpole has been plastered all over an event of actual significance, and the fine folks at Global were only too happy to be the perpetrators of the plastering?

****

Also on that particular thread....A good discussion with Merv Adey and Mr. Beer 'N Hockey about what might happen to the influence of local proMedia pundits when the subscription pay walls go back up for real...More on that topic later.

I'll have more to say about this later (maybe), but as the clock chimes midnight and the late night sports talk radio world once again becomes Ben Maller's playpen for the next 36 hours or so, I can't help but notice how the weekend columns by the Vancouver Sun's Vaughn Palmer and The Globe's Gary Mason are, essentially, pale, late-arriving imitations of all that has been said and re-said in the Lotuslandian Bloggodome all week long.

So.

I don't know about you, dear reader...

But I, for one, sure am glad to see that The Dean and Rob Obvious are almost keeping up.

****

Here's the real thing though....

With their star pundits now consistently bringing up the rear 3 times out of 5, where do the geniuses at Postmedia and/or BellGlobeTSNCTVRDSEverythingElseMedia actually think folks will go (and/or nothave to pay for) when they go looking for analysis after those online subscription thingies kick in for real?

Saturday Morning Silver Linings Update....Because of something a reader mentioned offline, I went back through the archives....And, yes, the Dean himself did make the Wizards of soon-to-be Snookland very happy indeed when he wurlitzered-up the afore-mentioned 'Nettleton Letter' back during the LINO-Party Leadership Daze......Oh, and apropos of pretty much nothing other than the 'update' sub-header above...Did you know that there are actually pages and pages of stuff on gruel recipes archived in the googleplex?....I kid you not.

_________And something else worth noting...It never ceases to amaze me how often the proMedia punditry does not give credit where credit is due regarding who actually broke the story they are pontificating on...In this particular instance why can't they, like pretty much everyone in the Bloggodome did, give credit to Alex Browne of the Peace Arch News for breaking the 'Rich Coleman, Influence Peddler!' story?

Friday, January 25, 2013

TBogg, as you might expect, has thought pretty hard about what might happen next:

...Somehow I can’t imagine Princess Dumbass of The Norwoods (credit: C. Pierce) turning down a nice paycheck for troweling on some make-up and spending four minutes a couple of nights a week salad shooting some incoherent human-like sounds at Greta van Nolips from her Fox-built Wasilla studio/meth lab/Trig corral. I guess Sarah could end up at CNN which is, after all, a bit of a mess. Say what you will about the tenets of catering-to-the-lowest-common-denominator, racist, hyperbolic, Express Hover-Round To BugF*ckNutsVille Fox News, unlike CNN, at least its an ethos.

More likely in Sarah’s future I see some ribbon cuttings at Hobby Lobby grand openings, a few more domestic disturbance calls from the neighbors living close by Winter White House NorthIce Palace Of The Boss Of You Casa de Gunshots & Incoherent Screaming...

Hmmm....

I'm not entirely certain I fully agree with Mr. Bogg's analysis this time 'round.

Personally, now that Ms. Palin has, for sure, lost out on that Billy Shatner sidekick Priceline thingy to the kid from the Big Bang Theory, I reckon a gig as the new pitchmaster-flash for 'Depends' and/or a Siberian knock-off of 'The Clapper' might be the next really big thing on that horizon she can see from her house.